Who’s not going to jail this time?

Jay Jamison

Published
3:48 pm CDT, Friday, September 16, 2016

FILE - In this July 14, 2014 file photo, a man passes by a Wells Fargo bank office in Oakland, Calif. A House panel says it’s starting an investigation of Wells Fargo in its opening of millions of unauthorized accounts that has become a growing scandal. The House Financial Services Committee on Friday, Sept. 16, 2016, announced an investigation of the allegedly illegal activity by Wells Fargo employees to meet aggressive sales goals as well as the role of federal regulators in the debacle. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File) less

FILE - In this July 14, 2014 file photo, a man passes by a Wells Fargo bank office in Oakland, Calif. A House panel says it’s starting an investigation of Wells Fargo in its opening of millions of ... more

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FILE - In this July 14, 2014 file photo, a man passes by a Wells Fargo bank office in Oakland, Calif. A House panel says it’s starting an investigation of Wells Fargo in its opening of millions of unauthorized accounts that has become a growing scandal. The House Financial Services Committee on Friday, Sept. 16, 2016, announced an investigation of the allegedly illegal activity by Wells Fargo employees to meet aggressive sales goals as well as the role of federal regulators in the debacle. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File) less

FILE - In this July 14, 2014 file photo, a man passes by a Wells Fargo bank office in Oakland, Calif. A House panel says it’s starting an investigation of Wells Fargo in its opening of millions of ... more

Who’s not going to jail this time?

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Last week, the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that Wells Fargo, the nation’s third largest bank, will pay a whopping $185 million fine for fraudulently opening 1.5 million fake bank accounts, and moving money from legitimate accounts into the fake accounts without customer’s knowledge, according to news reports.

The bank has also fired at least 5,300 of its own workers who engaged in the practice of establishing the fake accounts.

“This is systemic behavior — including behavior that rises to the level of criminal fraud, real property theft (by taking money from a legitimate account without permission) …” writes Nicole Gelinas in the Sept. 11 edition of the New York Post.

My question in cases like this is always: Who’s not going to jail who in fact should be going to jail?

If you or I were in charge of an organization that committed similar acts as a matter of company policy, you can bet we’d be hauled into criminal court. Yet the government is allowing Wells Fargo to pay its fines without admitting wrongdoing, according to Gelinas.

Government actions like these, divides the nation into two distinct groups: those who are vulnerable to criminal prosecution and those who are not.

Of the big banks and other firms that received taxpayer’s money in the world’s largest bailout of financial institutions, following the economic meltdown eight years ago, how many big bank CEO’s have gone to jail? (I can only think of one, Kareem Serageldin, of Credit Suisse).

Paying the government the largest fine only punishes the unwitting stockholders of Wells Fargo. The actual perpetrators of the fraud, and the policy makers who encouraged it, will probably never see the interior of a criminal court, let alone a jail cell.

Actually, it’s worse than that. Fortune magazine’s Stephen Gandel reports that the executive in charge of the unit that perpetrated the fake accounts scheme received $124.6 million in stock options and other goodies as part of her retirement package. She wasn’t fired — she simply retired.

Sound familiar?

In 2013 Lois Lerner, the director of Exempt Organizations operations at the IRS, resigned and went into retirement — she wasn’t fired, she retired. Her policies effectively turned her division of the IRS into a political weapon to smack down opponents of Obama Administration policies. She never did a perp walk in handcuffs. Apparently violating the supreme law of the land wasn’t enough of an offense.

In both of these cases, the government — so far — has chosen not to prosecute. In their shameful conduct in the Clinton e-mails investigation, the FBI waived the routine requirement that Hillary Clinton’s testimony be taken under oath. Would you or I be given such a waiver, in similar circumstances?

How can we tell if a bank is too big to fail? Check to see if it can pay a $185 million fine plus compensation to its victims, and still have enough loose change to put together an additional $124.6 million golden parachute for the executive whose rogue division brought about the investigation and fine in the first place. Too big to fail apparently includes to big to jail.

People who have enormous wealth along with those who have influence in government are rarely held fully accountable for their actions, which often include offenses that would land the rest of us in the slammer.